Tie A Yellow Ribbon

This tune has some special memories for me.   A few years ago a small group of our Dallas ukulele club were asked to perform at a special recognition dinner for Ebby Halliday, the premier real estate gal in the Dallas area, and one of the major philanthropists for some area charities.  Ebby, now 99 years young, is known to be a uke player, and that evening we played for all the guests coming to the event as they entered and exited the hotel lobby, as well as during one element of the recognition ceremony.  Tie A Yellow Ribbon is one of her favorite songs.

Ukulele Bartt is a regular on the ukulele festival circuit around the world and also has some instructional material at his web site,   http://www.bartt.net/.    Here is Bartt showing how he performs this song.  It is a good tune for ukuleles including the banjo uke as shown here.

Club Plans

One of the things that us old folks have to do is "write it down".  I have a good joke on this subject but it is true -- memory does fade a bit.

So here is what we decided to do with regard to our upcoming performances.  (Please forgive the businesslike listings, but my old habits are kicking in.)

1.  At least initially, we will be meeting every Sunday afternoon at the Prairie Rose from 1 to 3 in the afternoon.   Bring a music stand and your uke.

Note: these might change depending on any other activities at the village.  

2.  I will make up song books and bring them to the first meeting, this Sunday.  You will keep them so you can practice unfamiliar songs at home,  If any changes are made to our set list, you will have to keep your book up to date.  Some of the song sheets in the book are copies of pages from a fake book so I cannot send out the songs electronically.

3.  Some of the songs have the lyrics in "hymnal" format and if this proves to be a problem, I will redo the sheet and send it to you.

4.  I hope to keep the total cost of the ring binder and printing of all the sheets to $5

5.  Can'n, Rex and I will book one weekend day during December for a performance day.  It could be either Saturday or Sunday afternoon, but not both.  Preferably 2 locations in one day, close to each other to reduce transit times between gig locations.  This will give is a total of 6 locations.  We might go to upscale independent living places or nursing homes where some of the audience may be in beds.  All will welcome us.

6.  We have scheduled practices for every Sunday in November.  Since this month includes Thanksgiving, we may have to "tweak" practice days in that part of the month.

7.  Lastly, it takes a bit of work to get an hour's worth of material down.  You may recall Helen mentioning we should be practicing twice a month to get polished.  So please work on the songs at home.  Use a metronome if you have one.

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As for the future, we mentioned getting on a Tulsa transit bus some afternoon, going to a flea market or farmers market.   Get a good set down and we can be in any of the many festivals around the area w/o much new effort.   

Valentine's Day is coming up in February, but it might be too close to Christmas to get a program for that special day.  But we already have a number of songs in our quiver -- Ain't She Sweet, 5'2, Your Sixteen --  just to mention a few.  And there are some songs with humor -- "If my nose was running money"  and "I met my gal in the porta potti line", to mention a couple  more (but probably not the latter one)

Cap'n mentioned renting the Spotlight Theater for an afternoon and getting some publicity for it via TV and the print media.  Wendy mentioned the Troubadour's Emporium and I think that Bryan (the owner) would be glad for us to do a few songs as an opener for one of his weekend evening shows.

Wendy will be at the Jazz Depot in a couple months, so we will have to get a table there for her show.

So there is some enthusiasm growing for stretching beyond simple club jams.  For now, lets concentrate on the Christmas program.

Remember this is for fun, our enjoyment, and the enjoyment of the listener. 

Four Fingers, Four Strings, For Fun

Ralph

Important - Mark Your Calendars

It is important that you mark your 2013 calendars for April 20.  That's when we will all be making a trip to Overland Park, KS to attend the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain's final concert of their April 2013 tour.

Here is the link to order tickets

http://www.jccc.edu/performing-arts-series/events/2012-2013/ukulele-orchestra.html

Be sure to click on the video in that link.  We must not forget to bring our ukes for the special event that they have as part of the concerts.

There are many of numbers on YouTube -- here is just one.

Sunday, October 28th

Our plans for developing a performance set has changed to one aimed at the Christmas/Holiday season.  We will be meeting in the activity room at the Prairie Rose (74th and Riverside) from 1 to 3 in the afternoons, starting on the 28th.

We are scheduling the room for every Sunday afternoon to early December for practice sessions.  More may be added, or some may be deleted, depending on how our program progresses and on the schedule that we will be developing for visiting retirement villages and nursing homes.

If you have any favorite seasonal songs, be they conventional religious (i.e., Away in a Manger) or secular (i.e., Jingle Bells), send them along to Ralph and Rex.

If you have any suggestions as to villages to visit, send them along too.

Ken Middleton Interview

One of the ukulele web page with a lot of information has just included a long interview with Ken Middleton. Ken has been in a lot of YouTube videos, initially with his extensive reviews of all sixes and brands of ukuleles, and later with clips of some performances.

Ken is highly involved with the Ohana group and is now marketing his own ukulele strings (Living Strings).

You might find this interview interesting, for it covers his extensive background in music, teaching and more recently, the ukulele.

http://www.gotaukulele.com/

Player Profile

Don;'t forget to enter yourself into the FleaMarket Player Profile.   The more folks we show in the greater Tulsa area, the better.  It's free and good promotion.

https://www.fleamarketmusic.com/directory/default.asp

Leap Year Edition will be out in late October

The FleaMarket site says the latest version of Jim and Liz Beloff's book or songs arranged for the uke will be on the shelf in late October.  The site lists the 366 songs in this edition.  And I see that Barnes and Noble will  carry it too, so you can check it out in person.

http://www.fleamarketmusic.com/store/Scripts/prodView.asp?idproduct=302

Sunday, 28 October

Greetings

There has been some discussion about having a club meeting on a weekend so as to allow those folks who cannot get to our regular Tuesday evening meeting,  come to a club meeting and join in the fun.  We are lucky to have Ellen get us access to the Prairie Rose Activity Room on Sunday afternoons.

So our first meeting on a Sunday will be October 28th, the last Sunday in the month, from 1 to 3 PM at the Prairie Rose, 74th and Riverside.

Some of us are interested in giving the members a goal to work toward, and gigs at retirement villages are always welcomed by the residents,  So many of the songs that we will work on that Sunday will be ones that we think would be good numbers for those venues.

The 4th Sundays in November and December will have family and church conflicts for many of us, so the Sunday dates for those months will be selected at a later date.  

Hope to see you there.

Ralph

Second Daily Ukulele Book

Jim and Liz Beloff are about to release the second book in the "one song a day" series, this one being called the Leap Year Edition, with 366 songs.

Earlier this year, Jim asked for suggestions for the book contents and I send him a few that I thought would be good numbers.  This version is reported to be targeted more toward clubs and group singing than solo performances.  So it might be good for our purposes.

Some of us have the current issue, the 365 day version, and it has a lot of advantages, principally being that the complete melody line is provided so one can see the timing and the proper inflections to be put into your voice, but not surprisingly it has some disadvantages too, such as a frequent use of the hymnal style of stacking lyrics and having extra lyrics simply printing at the bottom of the page.  Most of us prefer to have each chorus or bridge printed alone -- much easier to follow.

Another advantage -- all the songs are arranged for ease of playing with a uke.  They are somewhat simplified compared to some very complex guitar arrangements, but some songs do require you to work a bit harder than a lot of simple three chord songs.

The big disadvantage to using it as a club book is that we will all have some songs that we like to play and these would end up being in a ring binder -- so we would have two books.

I'll bring my copy of the 365 day edition to the club meeting and if anyone wants to join me in getting the 366 day version, we can save a couple pennies by ordering as a group.  At about $25 for 366 songs, all arranged for a uke, this is a very good price for a fake book.

Here is the link where you can see the songs in the 365 day edition.  Click on the "song list"

http://www.fleamarketmusic.com/store/Scripts/prodView.asp?idproduct=258

Here is the link to pre-order the latest version (but w/o the song list)

http://www.amazon.com/Daily-Ukulele-Leap-Year/dp/1458482685/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1349358218&sr=1-1&keywords=leap+year+daily+ukulele